Song of Solomon 5

Today’s Passage: Song of Solomon 5

This chapter opens in the warmth of a garden, where the groom has come to his bride and speaks with the fullness of a joy that overflows even to his friends. But then the mood shifts, and we are taken into a long night. The bride is half-asleep when her beloved comes knocking, and by the time she rouses herself and rises to open the door, he has already turned and gone. What follows is a season of searching in the dark, in which she is even mistreated by the watchmen of the city, and it drives her to charge the daughters of Jerusalem with a message: tell him I am sick with love. When they ask her what makes this one man better than any other, her answer is not a shrug but a song, a glowing head-to-toe praise of him that ends in one of the tenderest lines in all of Scripture: he is altogether lovely, my beloved and my friend.

As you read, hold this: Even a season of distance can deepen love’s longing and teach the heart how precious the beloved is, held as both beloved and friend.

Song of Solomon 5:1 (BSB)

¹ I have come to my garden, my sister, my bride; I have gathered my myrrh with my spice. I have eaten my honeycomb with my honey; I have drunk my wine with my milk. Eat, O friends, and drink; drink freely, O beloved.

The chapter begins at the height of gladness. The groom has come to his garden, and every image he reaches for, the myrrh and spice, the honeycomb, the wine and milk, is a way of saying that the love he shares with his bride is sweet and satisfying and wholly good. Notice that he calls her both his sister and his bride, which in the language of the Song is the highest tenderness, joining the settled affection of family to the ardor of the wedding day. And notice too that his joy cannot stay locked away in private; it spills over into an invitation to his friends to eat and drink and rejoice with him. True love is not a miser. When a heart is full, it wants the whole table to be glad.

Song of Solomon 5:2–3 (BSB)

² I sleep, but my heart is awake. A sound! My beloved is knocking: “Open to me, my sister, my darling, my dove, my flawless one. My head is drenched with dew, my hair with the dampness of the night.”

³ I have taken off my robe—must I put it back on? I have washed my feet—must I soil them again?

Now the scene turns, and we are drawn into a night that will teach the whole lesson of the chapter. The bride is drifting between sleep and waking when she hears him at the door, and hear how he pleads with her, heaping up the dearest names he has: my sister, my darling, my dove, my flawless one. He has come through the cold and the dew of the night to be near her. And here is the quiet tragedy of the moment. She hesitates. I have taken off my robe, she reasons, and washed my feet; must I get up and undo all that comfort? It is such a small, human reluctance, the drowsy unwillingness to be disturbed, and yet it is the hinge on which the sorrow of the whole night will turn. How often love is not lost by some great betrayal but simply by a moment’s slowness to rise.

Song of Solomon 5:4–6 (BSB)

⁴ My beloved put his hand to the latch; my heart pounded for him.

⁵ I rose up to open for my beloved. My hands dripped with myrrh, my fingers with flowing myrrh on the handles of the bolt.

⁶ I opened for my beloved, but he had turned and gone. My heart sank at his departure. I sought him but did not find him. I called, but he did not answer.

The delay does not last long. His hand reaches for the latch, and at once her heart pounds and her whole reluctance melts away. She rises, and even the myrrh that drips from her fingers onto the bolt tells us how eagerly she now moves toward him. But when she opens the door, he is gone. He had turned and gone, and her heart sank at his departure. Read those words slowly, for they hold something every loving heart knows. The brief coldness, the moment’s delay, has cost her his nearness, and now she must feel the ache of his absence. She seeks and does not find; she calls and hears no answer. And yet, strangely, it is precisely this ache that is waking her love to how precious he is. Sometimes we do not know the full worth of what we have until, for a season, we cannot lay hold of it.

Song of Solomon 5:7 (BSB)

⁷ I encountered the watchmen on their rounds of the city. They beat me and bruised me; they took away my cloak, those guardians of the walls.

Her search leads her out into the dark streets, and here the night grows harder still. The very watchmen who ought to guard and help her instead strike her and wound her and strip away her cloak. It is a painful turn, and we should not rush past it. Love that longs for the beloved is not spared the roughness of the world; sometimes the seeking itself brings bruises. Yet notice what all this hardship does not do. It does not turn her back. She could have taken the beating as a reason to give up the search and return to her comfortable bed, but her heart is now so set on finding him that not even mistreatment can quench it. The distance and the difficulty together are forging in her a longing far deeper than the drowsy ease she felt only hours before.

Song of Solomon 5:8 (BSB)

⁸ O daughters of Jerusalem, I adjure you, if you find my beloved, tell him I am sick with love.

Unable to find him herself, she turns to the daughters of Jerusalem and lays a solemn charge on them: if you find my beloved, tell him this one thing, that I am sick with love. There is no pretense left in her now, no reluctance to be troubled, no counting of the cost of getting up. The season of absence has stripped all of that away and left only the naked truth of her heart. She is lovesick, undone with longing for him, and she does not care who knows it. This is what a little distance has done. The one she was too weary to rise for has become the one she would send the whole city searching after.

Song of Solomon 5:9 (BSB)

⁹ How is your beloved better than others, O most beautiful among women? How is your beloved better than another, that you charge us so?

The daughters of Jerusalem answer her charge with a question, and it is exactly the right question to draw out her heart. What makes this beloved of yours, they ask, so much better than any other man that you would trouble us like this? To them he may be one man among many, but they can see that to her he is something more, and they want to know why. It is a kindness, really, this asking, for it hands her the very opening she needs. Grief and longing that stay locked inside can curdle into despair, but here she is invited to say aloud what her beloved means to her, and in the saying, her love will find its fullest voice.

Song of Solomon 5:10–13 (BSB)

¹⁰ My beloved is dazzling and ruddy, outstanding among ten thousand.

¹¹ His head is purest gold; his hair is wavy and black as a raven.

¹² His eyes are like doves beside the streams of water, bathed in milk and mounted like jewels.

¹³ His cheeks are like beds of spice, towers of perfume. His lips are like lilies, dripping with flowing myrrh.

Now she answers, and her answer is a song of praise that begins at his head and works its way down, treasuring him detail by detail. He is dazzling and ruddy, she says, outstanding among ten thousand, which is to say that out of all the men in the world her eyes go straight to him. She reaches for the costliest and loveliest things she knows to describe him: his head like purest gold, his hair dark and rich, his eyes gentle as doves washed clean beside quiet waters, his cheeks fragrant as beds of spice, his lips like lilies dripping with myrrh. We are not meant to picture a literal statue of gold and flowers. We are meant to feel the wonder of a heart so full of one person that ordinary words will not do, and only the finest and most beautiful images can begin to carry the weight of love. This is what the long night has produced in her, not a diminished love, but a love overflowing.

Song of Solomon 5:14–16 (BSB)

¹⁴ His arms are rods of gold set with beryl. His body is polished ivory bedecked with sapphires.

¹⁵ His legs are pillars of marble set on bases of pure gold. His appearance is like Lebanon, as majestic as the cedars.

¹⁶ His mouth is most sweet; he is altogether lovely. This is my beloved, and this is my friend, O daughters of Jerusalem.

She finishes the portrait with images of strength and stateliness: his arms like rods of gold, his body like polished ivory, his legs like pillars of marble set on bases of gold, his whole bearing tall and majestic as the great cedars of Lebanon. And then, having praised him from head to foot, she gathers it all into two short sentences that say more than the whole catalog before them. He is altogether lovely, she says, and then, tenderly: this is my beloved, and this is my friend (רֵעַ) rea, pronounced RAY-ah. Strong's H7453, friend, companion, neighbor. It is worth lingering over the fact that the Song’s great description of the beloved does not end on a word of passion but on this quieter, sturdier word, rea, friend. This is the ordinary Hebrew word for a companion, the neighbor you live beside, the fellow you walk the road with, the one whose company you simply want. Scripture uses it for the friend who sticks closer than a brother and for the love commanded in “you shall love your neighbor as yourself.” So when the bride reaches the summit of her praise and calls her beloved not only the dazzling one outstanding among ten thousand but also her rea, she is telling us that the highest love is not passion alone but passion joined to friendship. The distance of that long night could have soured into resentment; instead it deepened into this. She wants him near not only as the one she desires but as the one she most delights to be with, and that is a love built to last. . Do not pass by that second word too quickly. After all the gold and spice and marble, what she names last is friendship. The one she loves with all the ardor of a bride is also the one she would choose as her dearest companion, the friend she would want beside her whether the images held true or not. That is the shape of covenant love at its truest. It holds the other as both beloved and friend, and a season of distance, far from dimming it, has taught her heart just how precious that one is.